holiday party

last night i went to the holiday party, with Tracy. (long story short: we’ve talked and decided that it’s best to be friends for now) given the circumstances, i didn’t know what i was going to do for the party. was i going to go at all? was i still going to take Tracy? would she still want to go with me? should i go alone? or should i take someone else? i’m glad i went with Tracy. i thought i was going to be grumpy at the party (because i certainly was that morning) but i wasn’t at all, and i actually had the most fun i’ve had with her in quite some time. and it felt real good. now some of you might call me crazy or naive to do what i’m doing, but how many of you have friends that you’ve known and kept in touch with for 10+ years? that’s what we have, and it’s not something to be tossed away and forgotten. and maybe i really am being naive and this will all blow up in my face again, but it’s all worth it to me. this party felt like a fresh, new start for the both of us. i had some feelings that i haven’t felt since the first time we went out. i would like for us to get closer again, but i’m not going to push it this time. i think my mistake (one of them anyways) was just expecting things to happen a certain way and i freaked out when they weren’t. that’s when things got bad. too much pressure for her and me. so for now, we’re just friends and we’re still going to hang out and have fun, and whatever happens happens. no expectations, no pressure. so anyways, about that party… we met up at the D&B parking lot, and after we got out of our cars, we were offered a tram ride to the place which was only about 50 feet away, so we just walked. there was a cool SOE logo ice-sculpture up front, and there was another ice sculpture of an heavy-armored PlanetSide character inside too. Sony rented out the entire place and everything was on the house — appetizers, drinks, and a $50 game card for each of us. played a ton of games. we started with this sit-down jurrassic park game and we were trying to figure out how to play the game and pondering why it only had 1 button. well about one minute into the game, while mashing down this one big button to kill the dinosaurs, we realized that there were guns on the side. doh. that was pretty funny. also played a number of driving games, this fun but painful Star Wars game that should be called Carpal Tunnel Madness. there was this pretty cool game that we both spent a lot of time on. i think it was called Police 911 or something like that. basically you have a gun and you have to shoot the baddies, all the while dodging these matrix-style slow bullets, by actually leaning over or ducking. i even tried jumping, and that worked, but i don’t really see that many cops jumping to get off a good shot. =) played a bunch of skeeball, but i think something was up with the machines. it cost about 3 credits to play and i was up around 90 to start, and it was going down 3 each time, but when it got down to about 70 credits, it wouldn’t let me play the next time, saying that i had insufficient credits. so i went down to 0 from 70. i confirmed this today with someone else, so something is up with those machines. got a bunch of prize tickets. had enough to get 2 shot glasses, 2 yo-yos, and 1 sparkly blue bracelet thingy. we’re going to go back sometime and try to get this Hello Kitty thing that Tracy wanted and then this Wonder Woman doll that i want (inside joke). we also got a couple pics taken. one was this green screen setup where we posed with these swords and then an EverQuest background was added behind us. pretty cool. pigged out on all kinds of food. fruits and veggies galore, turkey and hella good cheesecake for dessert. took advantage of the free drinks. i got a couple corona’s, a shot of something that i forgot, and a mudslide. got to finally introduce Tracy to some of my coworker buddies. (now she just needs to meet my cool LA friends now =) we checked out the dance room but they were playing this weird music, so we didn’t dance and i didn’t get to embarrass Tracy with my robot moves. awww, i didn’t get to embarrass her by playing DDR either. well there’s always next time… =)